THE HISTORY OF THE FESTIVAL PABLO CASALS
Pablo Casals decided to withstand Franco and the Spanish fascist regime. He definitely stopped playing and refused all kinds of distinctions awarded by the Allies after the defeat of Nazi Germany, considering that his people was still suffering under the yoke of the dictator. Obeying his conscience, he started a new period of exile in Prades, a blessed, isolated and above all Catalan village.
Various messengers came to Prades in order to make the Master change his decision. He would invariably answer : « it is not a matter of money, it is just a matter of morality ». The violinist Alexander Schneider finally tried his luck and spent three days in Prades with Pau Casals, offering him astronomical sums. New refusal. Schneider submitted him a proposal from the pianist Mieczyslaw Horzowksi: « you can’t condemn your art to silence. Since you don’t want to leave Prades we shall come there, a group of musicians, in order to celebrate the bicentenary of Bach’s death ». The festival was born in 1950…
PIERRE BLEUSE, NEW DIRECTOR ARTISTIC
After three editions conceived by the conductor Pierre Bleuse, artistic director of the Pablo Casals Festival in Prades since 2021, the audience today welcomes this major musical event in the Occitanie region with a mixture of impatience, enthusiasm, and curiosity.
Tradition and modernity, following in the footsteps of the founding father Pablo Casals, will once again preside over this new edition. By revealing artists from the international scene still little known in France, Pierre Bleuse dares to surprise the audience with varied musical repertoires; from baroque and ancient music to contemporary creations, in high places of the local heritage as sacred as the Abbey of Saint-Michel de Cuxa.
Like previous editions, the Chamber Orchestra of the Festival, a strong symbolic identity composed of 45 musicians, recognized professional soloists and instrumentalists at the beginning of their careers, will open and conclude the Festival at the Abbey of Saint-Michel de Cuxa by welcoming two young virtuoso soloists: the Swedish violinist, Daniel Lozakovich, present on stages worldwide, with Beethoven’s very romantic violin concerto, and the Russian cellist Anastasia Kobekina with the lively Rococo Variations by Tchaikovsky.
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ABBEY OF SAINT MICHEL DE CUXA
The enchanted framework of the Festival Pablo Casals, namely the abbey of Saint Michel de Cuxa, originates in the former abbey of Sant Andreu d’Eixalada, situated upstream and founded around 840. In the autumn of 878, a terrible flood destructed the monastery built on the river banks near hot water springs which were already known in the Antiquity, forcing the monks to flee. The community settled down in Cuxa, near an existing church devoted to Saint Germain.